Karachi muggers gun down father who sold jewellery for daughter's treatment

KARACHI: Street criminals are on the loose in Karachi as they shot dead a young man in the city's SITE-Superhighway Industrial Area, Geo News reported on Thursday.

In the mugging incident that took place earlier this week, a man named Farhan — who was returning home after selling his wife's jewellery to finance his daughter's treatment — was gunned down by the muggers on the street, according to the victim's family.

Farhan, who worked for pharmaceutical company, was facing financial difficulties due to his daughter's illness.

He received three bullets during the robbery incident, said the victim's father-in-law, who added that neither a case was registered nor the suspects were arrested so far.

The father-in-law added that the incident took place on Tuesday, but the police did not contact the family and only asked them to visit the police station to get a first information report registered when they were at the hospital.

The development comes just days after Karachi Police chief Javed Alam Odho claimed that street crimes in the metropolis have dropped by 50% in the first quarter of 2024. Deaths owing to street crimes in the city, however, have surpassed the 100 mark tally.

With the city's law and order situation left at the mercy of the street criminals, cases of deaths resulting from street crime keep on increasing.

Separately, a man named Umair was killed in a firing incident after his car was shot at near the Mubarak Mosque in Karachi's Defence area.

According to the police, the incident reflects a case of personal enmity. At the time of the incident, he was waiting for someone for 15 to 20 minutes and was speaking on phone.

In the meantime, two men on a motorbike opened fire at his car, leaving him riddled with seven bullets.

Street crimes in Karachi are rampant with more than 50,000 incidents documented by the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) between January and August this year.

It should be noted that the aforementioned number only reflects reported cases, but there may be countless other incident that have gone unreported.

The figure shows that on an average, 208 criminal cases are reported on a daily basis in the city, with the snatching and stealing of mobile phones, cars and motorbikes being the most common.

Not only have people been deprived of their valuable possessions in these cases but some 100 people have also lost their lives at the hands of the street criminals. Nearly 500 others have also been wounded due to the gunshots fired by the robbers.